BACKGROUND

Originally, I am trained within electronic engineering and have worked as engineer with F-16 fighter aircraft and in many years with commercial aircraft components - primarily in Scandinavian Airlines Systems (SAS).

I was in a period Production Director for SAS´s aircraft component worshops throughout Scandinavian. Later, I have had the responsibility for operation and maintenance of offshore and onshore wind farms in Europe in DONG Energy, have worked within HR for a number of years managing projects worldwide and has now returned to the technique and work with improvement of the Danish high voltage network. 

Technique, high quality and lots of travel has to a very high extend been the core of my working life.

EXPERIMENTS

Besides my job, I have always made a lot of experiments in my kitchen. In the 90´s, I made hard boiled sweets, toffees and wine gums with a long range of different tastes and pattern. E.g. stuffed sweets or hard boiled sweets with flag pattern. Always with an eye for high quality and a decent product. This was the time before you just could by a final kit or search all on the internet. So I spent a lot of time on searching for books or ingrediens in special shops. Later, it is mostly cakes and filled chocolate, which has been made again and again to reach perfection.

 GIN

Actually, I have never been drinking alcohol. I don´t really like beer and since my wife don´t drink wine, it happens only very rare with friends that we have wine on the dinner table at home.

But then in the Autumn 2016, I was invited to a gin tasting event by a good friend and I was sold. I had never had gin before and by first, I could only taste the alcohol in the gins we tried out. BUT I needed to conclude that some tasted awful and some, I actually liked and I was totally hook by the endless possibilities of mixing different tastes in gin and tonic. So I started to explore the area. At that time, I worked 3 days a week in London and had a lot of possibilities to visit different distilleries and ask my endless number of questions, which to my luck very voluntary were replied.

A day in the January 2017, where my flight was 5 hours delayed due to London fog, I found a tonic water recipe and I started my experiments. After a few tryouts, I was very satisfied with the taste and I made tonic water in different variations.  BUT I could not remove the colour, so I did not find my product good enough and lost the interest. At that time, gin manufacturing was a  utopic thought - but that was about to change...

My visits in the distilleries of London ended with a gin training course at the City of London Distillery, which gave the kick off to produce gin from scratch ourselves. After reading even more books and articles about distilling and gin manufacturing, a 2-liter distillery was purchased. The botanicals and ingredients were bought in Germany and the UK , where I was working the most of the week anyway.  

Since then I have spend a lot of time on different tests on tastes and fancy effects like e.g. a gin with Sichuan pepper, which prickle your lips even after distillation. 

My HØJER GIN has, besides juniper, grains of paradise and blackcurrant as the predominant botanicals. It is produced for the commercial market by Anders Bilgram from Nordisk Brænderi and has been made in small batches - literaly one bucket at a time.

In 2020, I have developed my HØJER GIN BASIC, which is my take on a totally classic, crisp gin with juniper, red kampot pepper and citrus as the predominant botanicals. The aim has been to develop: "The gin, you always return to."

In 2022, I have developed my HØJER GIN BLUE NAVY, which is a navy strength gin   with juniper, black kampot papper, lemon and grapefruit as the predominant botanicals. The aim has been to develop a high quality navy strength gin.

My next gin will most likely be a floral version. I need although to wait until spring since the flowers, I would like to include are from my garden and cannot be purchased as botanicals. Meanwhile, I exercise searching for the exact right balance...